MADISON, Wis. — Here we go again — another roadside sign comparing Republican Gov. Scott Walker to Adolf Hitler. “WALKERS MOTTO DIVIDE & CONQUER SO WAS HITLERS,” proclaims the grammatically challenged, hand-written sign pinned to posts just off of Mariner Road near Wisconsin Highway 83 in Hartland. The sign is across the highway from Westbrook Church, an Evangelical Christian worship center at 1100 Wisconsin 83. SIGN OF THE TIMES: Another ‘Walker is Hitler’ sign, this one in Hartland, Wis., amid the state’s heated campaign for governor. If history is any indicator, expect more of these messages during the last 15...

Teachers in Wisconsin's public schools have learned a major lesson from the state's landmark 2011 law neutering public sector unions, with more than a third dropping out of their labor organization. Given no choice but to join and pay dues to the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) for decades, teachers have for the last three years been able to opt out. And that is what tens of thousands have done as a result of Gov. Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill, also known as Act 10. “Given the evidence, it shows that the union's hold is softening," Patrick Wright, vice...

When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker signed a law curbing the power of public sector unions in his state in 2011, Democrats warned that public schools would suffer terribly. But one year after the law had taken effect--and in the midst of a recall campaign that was driven entirely by the backlash to the law--Democratic candidate Tom Barrett could not name a single school hurt by Walker's reforms. When Mary Burke, the Democrat challenging Walker in 2014, was asked last month by THE WEEKLY STANDARD if she could name any schools hurt by Walker's reforms, she replied with an anecdote about...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, faces a difficult re-election in six weeks. Under normal circumstances, he would probably be coasting to victory. He just beat a recall attempt in 2012, Wisconsin's economy is improving, and he put in place reforms that have already saved the state $3 billion. But of course, this is the issue. His now-famous union bargaining reforms of 2011 have incurred the wrath of America's big labor unions, which are now eager to defeat him. But anyone who doubts the wisdom of Walker's reforms — and the self-interested short-sightedness of the public union bosses — need...

Scott Walker can’t stop digging himself into a hole with union workers. After stripping public-sector union members of collective bargaining rights in 2011, one might think that there wasn’t more the Republican governor could do to anger workers. But Walker, who is locked in a tight race Wisconsin against Democratic challenger Mary Burke, ran afoul of the president of a local steelworkers’ union over a recent campaign ad. In the ad, Walker speaks to the camera from a deep hole. Jeff Kaminsiki, head of the United Steelworkers Local 2006, filed a complaint with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration over...

Mary Burke’s position as a member of the Madison Metropolitan School District board has played a minimal role in the governor’s race so far. Gov. Scott Walker tried to change that Sept. 3, 2014, calling on Burke and the board to find savings by using his signature Act 10, which dramatically curtailed collective bargaining for most public employees, including those of the district. In a campaign news release, Walker said Madison "will be the only school district left in the state out of 424 to ignore the law and not take advantage of Governor Walker’s reforms into the 2015-16 school...

MADISON, Wis – Wisconsin Reporter has learned the identity of the suspect accused of politically motivated disorderly conduct at last month’s Jefferson County Fair. April Kay Smith, 38, a kindergarten teacher in the Germantown School District, was issued a disorderly conduct citation for tearing up and stomping on several signs on July 9 at the Jefferson County Republican Party booth after the fair had shut down for the night, according to a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department report obtained by Wisconsin Reporter. The incident report, filed by Jefferson County Deputy Heather Larson, states that Smith and her husband, Andrew Smith, 31,...

CAMPBELLSPORT – On Friday, 6th District Congressional candidate Glenn Grothman (R-Campbellsport) slammed Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan) for accepting a maximum limit contribution from a progressive trade union. More: Stroebel, Leibham Trade Barbs Over Voter ID According to records from the Federal Elections Commission, Leibham accepted $5,000 from the Laborers Union International North America (LIUNA) PAC on July 15, 2014. The LIUNA was very evident during the 2011 protests against Governor Scott Walker over Act 10 which was upheld by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court and the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The LIUNA has 500,000 members that are represented in...

MADISON, Wis.—Wisconsin's highest court upheld a law ending most collective-bargaining rights for government employees in the state, a blow for public-sector unions that have been stymied in their efforts to reverse the controversial measure championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Madison — Dealing unions their latest loss in court, a federal appeals court Friday upheld Gov. Scott Walker's tight limits on collective bargaining for most public employees. The ruling by the three-judge panel upheld a September decision by U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison that the law known as Act 10 does not infringe on the rights of government workers. "Act 10 does not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment in favor of the state," the ruling reads. .

"Today is a win for transparency in government and the taxpayers of Wisconsin. The Court of Appeals has agreed with the MacIver Institute that Sen. Erpenbach cannot carve out a special exemption to the open records law for whomever he chooses or try to hide public information when he works for Wisconsin taxpayers," Brett Healy, President of the MacIver Institute said. "Government employees and their unions should not be given a cloak of anonymity to hide their attempts to influence the legislative process. Today's decision requires them to play by the same rules as everyone else." The Court of Appeals...

DULUTH, Minn. — The soaring Blatnik Bridge spans a modest body of water but a political gulf. Most mornings around 7, Kim and Kyle Smith drive a mile and a half across the bridge from Duluth, where they live, to Superior, Wis., where they teach. On the same bridge most mornings, scores of workers from Superior head the opposite direction, making their way to a foundry that Andy Fulton’s company runs in Duluth. This is a well-traveled commute between the Minnesota and Wisconsin cities, separated by the St. Louis River. Together, they are known as the Twin Ports for their...

Numbers of public sector unions in Wisconsin collapsed in the wake of an historic vote that ended on Thursday. The unions are acutely feeling the impact of Act 10, Governor Scott Walker’s controversy-generating collective bargaining reforms of 2011. The reforms require public sector unions to hold annual recertification votes. In order to be certified as unions by the state, the labor groups must get the approval of over 50% of their members. For several weeks now the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission has been holding an open and ongoing vote for over 400 unions, mostly made up of public school teachers...

The day after Thanksgiving, teachers and other school employees across the state will begin voting on whether or not to recertify the unions that have represented them for decades. The voting is done by phone over 20 days, concluding on Dec. 19 and is tallied by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. The elections are taking place despite a ruling by Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas that ordered WERC to not go ahead with the elections, which were mandated by Gov. Scott Walker's signature legislation curbing public employee union bargaining rights, Act 10. Colas ruled that WERC was in...

MADISON — Some kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders in Madison public schools are apparently preparing for futures in either political cartooning or time on a psychiatrist’s couch. Kati Walsh, an elementary art teacher at the Madison Metropolitan School District in July posted some of her students’ drawings of Gov. Scott Walker in jail. Walsh suggests her young Rembrandts’ ideas for their sketches popped up out of thin air. “One student said something to the effect of ‘Scott Walker wants to close all the public schools’… So the rest of the class started drawing their own cartoons and they turned very political....

The Kenosha Education Association (KEA), the state's third largest teachers union, was officially decertified on August 31, 2013 according to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. Mark Belling, who broke this story on Thursday, said that the decertification came after a recent vote by members in which only 37 percent voted to reauthorize the union. KEA is the largest teachers union to disband since Act 10 was signed into law in 2011. The union had 2,400 members according to their website. Act 10 limited collective bargaining rights for public employees and required public unions to have an annual vote to recertify....

In a long-awaited opinion, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin today rejected yet another attack on Act 10 brought by public sector labor unions. The case, Laborers Local 236, AFL-CIO v. Walker, was filed shortly after WEAC v. Walker was filed in the same court, raising some claims not brought in the WEAC case. In the WEAC case, the court held Act 10 unconstitutional in March of 2012, but was reversed the following January by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Act 10 against all of the unions’ challenges. We have been awaiting a...

MADISON – Thanks for nothing. No, really, thanks for nothing. Sen. Glenn Grothman, a staunch fiscal conservative, has nothing but praise for his peers in the Democratic Party who, he says, have done nothing to repeal Wisconsin’s controversial Act 10. The law, signed by Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, guts collective bargaining for most public employees in the state. “The press always focuses on disagreements, but the bipartisanship shown in agreeing that Act 10 should not be repealed is an untold story of us working together,” the West Bend Republican said in a statement, written, it would seem, with tongue...

Wisconsin's public employees are leaving their unions in droves, which should be no surprise: With passage of Act 10 in 2011, public unions in the Badger State lost many of their reasons for being. The "budget-repair bill" pushed through the Legislature by Republicans and signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker limited bargaining to wages only, and then only up to the cost of living; it also required unions to recertify each year and barred the automatic collection of union dues. Relying on federal financial records, the Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice found union membership has declined by 50% or more...

Some unions' finances also suffer after Scott Walker curtails powers Gov. Scott Walker's signature plan to slash collective bargaining has set off a Darwinian struggle for survival among Wisconsin's public employee unions. In the two years since Walker's plan became law, tens of thousands of teachers and state and local workers have dropped out of their unions, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of little-used federal financial records. No labor group has been hit harder than the one representing Milwaukee city and county workers. In 2010 — the year that Walker was elected governor — the American Federation of State,...

MADISON Â– The conclusion is succinct.Â“Wisconsin teacher unions currently have substantial resources from their members and have been an active force in Wisconsin state politics,Â” wrote the authors of the Â“How Strong Are U.S. Teachers UnionsÂ” report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an advocate for education reform.Â“But recent legislation, which sharply erodes their collective bargaining rights, likely heralds an era of diminished strength for public unions in general, and teacher unions in particular in the Badger State.Â” IN THE BEGINNING: Hallis Mallen, of Madison, Wis., takes part in a January 2012 Recall Walker rally at the Wisconsin State Capitol....

Who says government can’t get anything done? Union-backed lawmakers in Dane County and the city of Madison didn’t waste any time, using a judge’s suspension of Act 10 to hustle through extensions on expensive union contracts. One state lawmaker has reacted with equal dispatch. State Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, said he’ll do everything to kill state funding to Dane County in next year’s 2013-2015 budget. Nass made the claim in a news release last week within hours of the Dane County Board of Supervisors' 29-8 vote to extend current contracts until 2015. Dane County supervisors climbed through a window opened...

New Berlin - Jill Werner thought she'd retire in the School District of New Berlin. A 15-year-employee of the district, she started as a math teacher and then became a guidance counselor at New Berlin West Middle/High School. Colleagues and parents commend the way she connects with students as a counselor and coach, and Werner said she loves West's students, staff and families. But when Waukesha North High School came calling earlier this year, Werner, 42, accepted. The counseling position at North comes with less salary and benefits, she said. But it's a ticket out of a district she and...

MADISON — The dark fiscal clouds are starting to lighten in Wisconsin’s largest school District. But Milwaukee Public Schools‘ fiscal picture could be a lot brighter, had its teachers’ union chosen to open up its labor contract with MPS and agree to some salary concessions. Tweaking the deal could have saved scores of positions, opening up the opportunity for more teachers in the classroom, more programs to bolster the academic achievement of a school system that has seen its share of failure, and perhaps offering relief to Milwaukee taxpayers. Life is all about choices, and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association...

Madison - The state medical school disciplined 20 doctors and fined 11 of them up to $4,000 for handing out sick notes to demonstrators at last year's labor protests, newly released records show. The records, requested by the Journal Sentinel last year under the state's open records law, show for the first time the extent of the discipline given to those doctors by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. In several cases, doctors in more senior positions within the school also had to step away from those roles for a period of four months over one...

MADISON â€” While there is no disputing the divisiveness and political bitterness Act 10 has created, the law that redefined collective bargaining in Wisconsin has made a dramatic difference for the stateâ€™s financially struggling school districts, according to a report slated for release this week. But superintendents tell Wisconsin Reporter they worry about the long-lasting emotional scars left by the contentious reform battle. Wisconsin school districts have realized significant savings either through the implementation of collective bargaining changes or the threat of them, according to an analysis by the Michigan-based Education Action Group Foundation, [1] known as EAG, a nonprofit...